CAMPAIGN and LOST

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December 30, 2002

ISSUE DATE: December 30, 2002

UPDATED: December 30, 2002 00:00 IST

THREE DAYS BEFORE POLLING, CONGRESS LEADERS presented a picture of sprightly confidence. Accompanying Gujarat Congress chief Shankersinh Vaghela on his visit to a safe seat in Kheda district, Bharat Solanki, son of former chief minister Madhavsinh Solanki, couldn't hide his happiness at the way the campaign had gone. "If you want to learn about campaigning,"? the engineer-turned-politician exclaimed, "you have to sit with Kamal Nath. He has worked wonders in Gujarat."?

Sitting in the presidential suite on the 8th floor of Hotel

Fortune in Ahmedabad, the AICCgeneral secretary didn't disagree. With a successful Sonia Gandhi meeting in Mehsana behind him, Kamal Nath didn't exude modesty. "I converted a party in coma into a fighting machine."? Fellow AICC General Secretary Ambika Soni nodded her approval. "We are going to sweep Saurashtra,"? she said. Going by body language alone, the Congress seemed on the verge of pulling off one of the greatest upsets in recent times. And all courtesy Congress President Sonia Gandhi who "gave us a free hand"?. Clutching a pile of spiral-bound folders, Kamal Nath claimed his optimism was based not on instinct but hard evidence culled from "scientific"? surveys. On the face of it, they sounded rational and impressive. Local issues like price rise, cooperative bank scam and lack of development, he asserted, would determine the vote. Emotional themes that the BJP was playing up were "all too abstract"?. In short, anti-incumbency would be a key factor. His second theory"?again based on surveys"?was that a majority were voting for an MLA, not a chief minister. That meant that Modi's dizzying popularity would count for very little on December 12.

ON the issue of candidates, Kamal Nath radiated over-confidence. Apart from a few "exceptions"?, the bulk of the Congress candidates was selected on the strength of surveys and impartial inputs. In September, 31 Congress leaders handpicked by Kamal Nath and drawn from Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan fanned out to constituencies to prepare a status report and draw up a shortlist of possible candidates. The Congress "monitors"? were also asked to grade the possible candidates in terms of suitability. This was followed by constituency-level surveys to assess recall value, caste worth and popular standing of potential candidates. Armed with this information, Kamal Nath convened a meeting of the 31 leaders with Vaghela and former chief minister Amarsinh Choudhury to finalise the candidates. "Of course,"? he concedes, "in some cases, there were other considerations."?

The pillars on which the Congress strategy rested were based on surveys. "I am paying you to give me bad news,"? Kamal Nath is claimed to have told the pollsters. In the event, their advice, quite predictably, bypassed the chemistry of politics. As Modi rode his Gaurav rath stressing Godhra and the hurt Gujarati pride, Vaghela took off to the US at the invitation of NRI Muslim groups. There, he repeated his charge that Godhra was a BJP conspiracy. The BJP retaliated by calling it a "dollar yatra"?.

It didn't worry the Congress high command. Having completed its surveys, the party felt that the most effective way to blunt the BJP's Hindutva was to flaunt its own Hindu credentials. Thus, the pretender Puri Shankaracharya, Chhote Murari Bapu and Satpal Maharaj were pressed into service to rubbish Modi and the VHP. And Sonia was made to start her campaign after praying at the Ambaji temple. At the same time, care was taken not to overexpose the Muslim support the party could take for granted. Muslim Congressmen were largely invisible during the campaign.

In the final days, the Congress offensive banked heavily on the media and NGOs. Congressmen imagined that the media had detected a substantial undercurrent that would negate the voluble Hindutva rhetoric of Modi. This impression was fuelled by activists from over 200 NGOs, drawn from all over India, who campaigned in slums and Muslim localities for the Congress.

The day after the poll, Sonia entered Parliament carrying two slips of paper. The first carried Vaghela's assessment"?Congress 110 seats. The second had her political secretary Ahmed Patel's take"?Congress 100 seats.

Two days later, the recriminations began.

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